‎Alcoholics Anonymous How To Recover From A Spiritual Malady 2003 by Bob D on Apple Music

For some people, nature or the universe might be their Higher Power. For example, AA rooms offer fellowship and support and provide a structure that can help keep you sober. These are all positive things that can help you on your journey to recovery, regardless of your beliefs. https://ecosoberhouse.com/ In AA, one of the main goals is to become sober and stay sober. To do this, members must rely on their support system which includes other members, sponsors, and meetings. When people become too self-reliant, they often start to think that they don’t need AA anymore.

In this book you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him. If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning.

The Power of Obsession in Alcoholism and Addiction

For many recovering alcoholics this may be another unpalatable truth, that they have issues with emotional responding, with being emotionally mature. If further validation is required I suggest a frank conversation with a loved one, wife, husband, child, parent, etc. One of the earliest studies on AA members concluded that they were linked in commonality by two variables, emotional immaturity and grandiosity! I would contend that grandiosity is a part of emotional immaturity. I also contend that our “maladjustment to life” is based on emotional immaturity which is in itself a function of emotion regulation and processing deficits. So we have issues with emotions and somatic/body feeling states. That is not to say that normal people cannot be full of sin – a cursory look around the work and it’s events will soon confirm this is the case.

It is interesting that a common definition of “spiritual” as it relates to AA, is a sense of connection with others. Part of the problem may lie in not being specific enough about what alcoholism is. How do you prepare for life after treatment, and what kind of help do you need? Ever wonder what a chronic relapser is and how they can affect your family?

Twelve-step program

This emotional immaturity is referenced throughout the Big Book I believe. For me this maladjustment to life is not exactly the same as the spiritual disease mentioned in the Oxford Group pamphlet. My inventory showed me also that I did not seem to have spiritual malady the facility previously to emotionally respond to the world in a mature way. I am not advocating changing anything, I hope AA recovery remains as it is for 80 more years and much more years. I would not change one word in the first 164 pages of the BB.

• Instead our emotions do what they are supposed to do.
• The years of recovery reveal many different things, some of them not so palatable.
• But we were never satisfied, because but the living presence of God can quench our parched souls.
• My sponsor at the time asked me to do an additional part that is not explicitly mentioned in the Big Book.
• Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
• Although social support is key to early engagement in the Twelve-Step membership, over time, spiritual issues emerge as increasingly important and helping others achieve recovery is at the heart of this.

Things may change over time, and you never know when or how your beliefs might evolve. The important thing is that you stay committed to your sobriety and continue working the program – eventually, everything else will fall into place. As we work towards this state of selflessness we find that we are slowly being relieved of the hopeless alcoholic state we once thought we were doomed to be in forever. It is constant maintenance of being spiritually connected with a god of your understanding.

What About God?

I can get out of the distress of wanting/needing stuff by asking God to remove those negative emotions which block me off from Him. I can manage my spiritual malady or emotional dysfunction, I have the tools to do so. As I would have had a resentment, it would have had a wolf pack of negative emotions attached. I would add to this that I also get distress via fears of rejection from others, I suffer from fear based shame to a chronic extent.

I related and all my negative emotions retreated to source like a evening tide on a beach. I respond to feelings of humiliation by humiliating you, I react to my chronic shame by attempting to created shame in you. These are my main negative emotional reactions to the world that often scare me and make me feel ashamed. Sometimes the shame persists for some time and I try to relieve it by behavioral addictions, too much shopping, too much eating, too much objectification of the opposite sex. However, there seems to be a problem specifically with a patterned mesh of negative emotions which are activated when someone upsets me. I was drawing up a web of my emotional dysregulation, a route map of all the wrong ways to go, to emotional cul de sacs. I do not necessarily have to react to my feelings of negativity about myself, someone else does not need to experience the consequence of my resentments.

Filling the Hole: Fixing the Spiritual Malady

Finding out what is really going on with us emotionally is at the heart of recovery. That is why we have to constantly share how we are feeling with others so that we can find out what we are feeling. These illustrate how the 12 step programme can help with an emotion dysregulation disorder.